A CHINESE NEWSPAPER, LITTLE FEET, AND AN OPIUM JOINT
In Chinatown--A Chinese Editor--His Views of Chinese Life--A Daily
Paper and the Way in Which it is Printed--A Night School--The Mission
of the English Language--A Widow and Her Children--Pair of Small
Shoes--Binding of the Feet and Custom--Mrs. Wu Ting-Fang on Small
Feet--Maimed and Veiled Women--The Shulamite's Feet--An Opium-joint--A
Wretched Chinaman--Fascination of Opium--History and Cultivation
of the Poppy--The East India Company and the Opium War--An Opium
Farmer--How the Old Man Smoked--De Quincey and His Experiences--"I
Will Sleep No More."
As my guide and I went forth to visit the places of interest in
Chinatown, we directed our steps first of all to the Chinese newspaper
office. This is located at No. 804 Sacramento street, corner of Dupont
street. On being ushered in I met with a cordial welcome from the
managing editor, Mr. Ng Poon Chew, who, before I bade him good-bye,
exchanged cards with me. He, I learned, is a Christian minister and
is the pastor of a Chinese church in Los Angeles. His literary
attainments and business capacity peculiarly fit him for his work
on the Chinese paper, and he is held in high esteem by Chinamen
generally. He is a man about four feet five inches in stature, and
possibly forty years old. It is hard, however, to tell a Chinaman's
age, and so he may be five or ten years older. He is what you would
call a handsome man, with a fine head and a beaming countenance. He
showed great warmth in his greeting--and this was the more remarkable
as the Chinaman is generally cool and impassive. He was dressed in the
Chinese fashion with the traditional queue hanging down behind. He
presented altogether a striking appearance, and you would single
him out from a crowd as a man of more than ordinary cultivation and
ability. He talked English fluently, and it was a pleasure to listen
to him. He has well defined views regarding China and other countries.
When questioned about the Flowery Kingdom, he said that the people
were very conservative, that they do not wish for change, and that
Chinese women dress as they did thousands of years ago. He remarked,
however, that there is a younger generation of Chinamen who long for
a change and for reform in methods, I suppose after the manner of the
so-called "Young Turks" in the Sultan's dominions. They would like the
improvements of European and American life, and would shake off the
trammels of the past to a large extent, just as Japan has shaken off
the sleep of centuries and is marching towards greatness among the
strong nations of the world. With the modern appliances and advances
in civilisation and armies well drilled like those of England or the
United States of America, and with great war-ships well manned, they
would be able to meet the world and to defend themselves and repel
every invader from their country. He says the Chinese have good
memories, that they will never forget the manner in which opium came
to them, and the opium war of 1839. When he was a child he was taught
to pray to a wooden god, and he had to rise as early as 3:30 A.M. to
go to school to study the teachings of Confucius. As the custom is to
go so early in the morning to school, the children sometimes drop to
sleep by the way as they are hastening on. Chinamen will tell you that
they have the religion which is best for them. This is the doctrine of
Confucius; but Confucius, while a great scholar, was not a saint. He
taught men "to improve their pocket," but did not teach them much
about their soul. In order to see the real effect of the teachings of
Confucius, you must go to China. Confucius may make men whom you may
admire, but he cannot make men whom you can respect. The religion of
Confucius is dreary and is lacking in the warmth and blessing which
come from a belief in the Bible.
It is most certainly refreshing to hear this learned Chinaman talking
and giving his impressions and opinions about matters of such vital
importance. Ng Poon Chew, at my request, gave me the business card of
the newspaper. This states that the paper, which is published daily
in Chinese, is called "Chung Sai Yat Po," and that it has the largest
circulation of any Chinese paper published outside of the Chinese
Empire. The card further tells us that "this paper is the organ of
the commercial element in America and is the best medium for Chinese
trade." In addition to the daily issue of the newspaper, "English and
Chinese Job Printing" is done in the office. The work of interpreting
the English and Chinese languages is carried on here. Mr. Ng Poon Chew
spoke with evident pride about his paper, and informed me that he gave
a daily account of the proceeding's of the General Convention, then in
session in Trinity Church, San Francisco, in the "Chung Sai Yat Po."
The editing of a Chinese newspaper is no easy matter. The printing of
the paper is difficult and requires great skill and patience. There
are, for example, forty thousand word-signs, all different, in the
Chinese language, and to represent these signs there must be separate,
movable type-pieces. It is said that it takes a long period of time to
distribute the type and lay out "the case." The typesetter must know
the word by sight to tell its meaning, otherwise he will make serious
blunders. Then it is a hard matter to find intelligent typesetters.
The editor, too, must be a man of business. The paper is watched by
spies of the Chinese Government, and if the editor expresses himself
in any manner antagonistic to the Emperor or the Dowager Empress or
any of the viceroys of the provinces, his head would be cut off if he
ever ventured to set foot in China. There is another obstacle in the
way of a Chinese newspaper of liberal views, like the "Chung Sai Yat
Po." It cannot get its type from China, as the Government is opposed
to every reform paper. The type for such a journal is cast in a
Japanese foundry in Yokohama. It is said that about ten thousand
word-signs are used in the printing of the newspaper. The type-case is
usually long, for the purpose of allowing all the type-pieces to be
spread out. The type runs up and down in a column, and you read from
right to left as in Hebrew or other Shemitic languages. The characters
are as old in form as the days of Confucius. The "Chung Sai Yat Po"
has a very large circulation and finds its way to the islands of the
Pacific Ocean and into China.
From the newspaper office we wended our way to a little Baptist
mission chapel for the Chinese. There were about forty persons
congregated here, among them some ten or twelve Americans who were
teaching the Chinese the English language. This night school is
popular with young, ambitious Chinamen, for when they learn our
language it is much easier for them to obtain work in stores and
offices, and even as house servants. The books used had the Chinese
words on one page and the English sentences opposite. Sometimes
converts to Christianity are made through the medium of the night
school, but it takes time and patience to win a Chinaman from
the religion of Confucius. It is worth the labour, however. The
difficulties in the mastery of English are a great barrier to
conversions. Nevertheless they do occur. A Chinaman is readily reached
through his own language. Hence the importance of raising up native
teachers of the Gospel who can speak to the hearts as well as to the
understanding of their countrymen. As we observed in the foregoing
chapter, in the Orient, as in Syria and Egypt, Jews and Mohammedans
sometimes allow their children to attend the English schools, and to a
large extent from a worldly motive. The Syrian or Arab who can speak
English is in demand as a dragoman, an accountant, an office clerk in
the bazaar, or a camp-servant or boatman. Indeed a great revolution is
now taking place all through the East. Nearly all the young Egyptians
can talk English, and this is the first step towards their conversion
to the faith of the Gospel. When they are able to read the books of
the Christians in the English, they are led to look favourably on
the Church. They catch the spirit of belief in Jesus Christ from the
Christian tourist. They lose the narrowness and bigotry which the
mosque or the synagogue fosters, and in time they examine the claims
of a religion which has built up the great nations of Europe and
America. The future has in store great developments for the Church in
Palestine and the old land of the Pharaohs through the agency of the
English schools, and I believe the readiest way in which to convert
the Chinese people, whether in Chinatown in San Francisco, or in China
itself, is to teach them our language and give them access to the Holy
Scriptures in our noble tongue. Our Church schools in China are doing
a great work in this respect. So is St. John's College in Shanghai.
They should all be liberally supported with offerings from America,
and what we sow in this generation will be reaped in the next, a
splendid harvest for Christ and His Church!
After leaving the night school our guide conducted us up narrow stairs
to the rooms occupied by a Chinese woman. She was a widow with four
children, daughters, and rather petite in form, and lacking the
physical development and beauty of the Caucasian race. They seemed shy
and timid, for Chinese women are not accustomed to the society of men.
In fact there is among them no such home-life as we are familiar with.
They were dressed in a measure after the fashion of our girls, and had
long, black hair. The mother said a few sentences in broken English,
and welcomed us with an air of sincerity, though not a little
embarrassed. She was a woman of about forty years, and from the
expression of her face had evidently met with trials. Brought over to
San Francisco from Canton when a young girl, she had married Shan Tong
with all the ceremony and merry-making which characterise a Chinese
wedding, with its processions and feasting and the noise of its
firecrackers; but some four or five years ago death claimed her
husband, and she was left to do battle alone, while he was laid to
rest in the Chinese burying-ground at the west end of Laurel Hill
Cemetery. But she did not suffer from want, for Chinamen are kind
to the needy of their own race. Among the objects which excited our
curiosity were the tiny shoes of the small-footed woman. These were
not quite three inches in length, and looked as if they were more
suited for a doll's feet than for a full grown woman's. Yes, here was
the evidence of a barbarous custom which deprives a human being of one
of nature's good gifts, so necessary to our comfort and happiness.
Think what you would be, if, through infirmity, you were not at
liberty to go hither and thither at will like the young hart or
gazelle! We grieve naturally if our children's feet are deformed or
misshapen at birth, but what a crime it is to destroy the form and
strength of the foot as God has made it! It is true that the Manchu
women in China rejoice in the feet which the beneficent Creator has
given them. The Dowager Empress--of whom we have read so much of late,
and who rules China with an iron rod, has feet like any other woman;
but millions of her countrywomen have been robbed of nature's
endowment through a foolish and wicked custom which has prevailed in
China from time immemorial. The feet are bound when the child is born,
and they are never allowed to grow as God designed, as the flower
expands into beauty from the bud. Chinese women realise that it is
foolish, that it is a deformity, but it is the "custom," and custom
prevails. It is like the laws of the Medes and Persians which alter
not. Women are powerless under it. It is in vain to a large extent
that they oppose it. There is in China an Anti-foot-binding League,
which receives the support of men of prominence. Even centuries ago
imperial edicts were issued against it, but custom still rules. It
was Montaigne who declared that "custom" ought to be followed simply
because it is custom. A poor reason indeed. There should be a better
argument for the doing of what is contrary to reason and nature.
Nature is a wise mother, and she bestows on us no member of the body
that is unnecessary. The thought of her fostering care was well
expressed by the old Greeks who lived an out-door life, in their
personification of Mother Earth under the creation of their Demeter,
perfect in form and beautiful in expression and noble in action. This
is far above the conceptions of nature or of a presiding genius over
our lives, taking into account social order and marriage vows, which
we find in Chinese literature or mythology. It is not difficult to
perceive the reason why the Greeks, who rule the realms of philosophy
and art and literature to-day, after the lapse of many centuries,
are the superior people. Well does that master-mind, Shakespeare,
characterise evil custom:
"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil."
But a better day is coming for Chinese women. Wherever Christianity
has touched them in the past they have been uplifted and benefited.
The sun seems now to rise in greater effulgence on the Kingdom of the
Yellow Dragon. The wretched custom of dwarfing and destroying the feet
of a child whose misfortune, according to Confucius, it is to be
born a female, is giving way under pressure from contact with the
enlightened nations of the world. The teachings of the Christian
Church are having their salutary effect and Chinamen are beginning to
learn the value of a woman's life from the Biblical standpoint, and
the daughters of the Flowery Kingdom will, as time goes on, become
more and more like the polished corners of the Temple, or the
Caryatides supporting the entablature of the Erechtheum at Athens. It
is Madame Wu Ting-Fang, wife of the Chinese Minister at Washington,
who has recently returned from a visit to her old home, who says: "The
first penetrating influence of exterior civilisation on the customs of
my country has touched the conditions of women. The emancipation of
woman in China means, first of all, the liberation of her feet, and
this is coming. Indeed, it has already come in a measure, for the
style in feet has changed. Wee bits of feet, those no longer than an
infant's, are no longer the fashion. When I went back home I found
that the rigid binding and forcing back of the feet was largely a
thing of the past. China, with other nations, has come to regard that
practice as barbarous, but the small feet, those that enable a woman
to walk a little and do not inconvenience her in getting about the
house, are still favoured by the Chinese ladies."
The custom of binding and destroying the feet, no doubt, arose from
the low views entained by Chinese sages concerning woman, and from
a lack of confidence in her sense of honour and virtue. She must be
maimed so that she cannot go about at will, so she shall be completely
under the eye of her husband, held as it were in fetters. It is a sad
comment on Chinese domestic morality, it fosters the very evil it
seeks to cure, it destroys all home life in the best sense. The veiled
women of the East are very much in the same position. If a stranger,
out of curiosity or by accident, look on the face of a Mohammedan
wife, it might lead to her repudiation by her jealous husband, or the
offender might be punished for his innocent glance. The writer recalls
how at Hebron, in Palestine, he was cautioned by the dragoman, when
going up a narrow street to the Mosque of Machpelah, where he had to
pass veiled women, not to look at them or to seem to notice them,
as the men were very fanatical and might do violence to an unwary
tourist. The Chinese women of small feet, or rather no feet at all,
walk, or attempt to walk, in a peculiar way. It is as if one were on
stilts. The feet are nothing but stumps, while the ankles are large,
almost unnatural in their development. It is indeed a great deformity.
The feet are shrunken to less size than an infant's; but they have not
the beauty of a baby's feet, which have in them great possibilities
and a world of suggestion and romance and poetry. If the Chinese
custom had prevailed among the ancient Hebrew people, think you that
King Solomon in singing of the graces of the Shulamite, who represents
the Church mystically, would ever have exclaimed,--"How beautiful
are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter!" We should have lost,
moreover, much that is noble in art, and the poetic creations of Greek
sculptors would never have delighted the eye nor enchained the fancy.
In our perambulations about Chinatown, we must next visit an
opium-joint. This mysterious place was situated in a long, rambling
building through which we had to move cautiously so as not to stumble
into some pit or dangerous hole or trap-door. Here were no electric
lights to drive away the gloom, here no gas-jets to show us where we
were treading, nothing but an occasional lamp dimly burning. Yet we
went on as if drawn by a magic spell. At last we were ushered into a
room poorly furnished. It was not more than twelve feet square, and in
the corner was an apology for a bed. On this was stretched an old man
whose face was sunken, whose eyes were lusterless, whose hand was long
and thin and bony, and whose voice was attenuated and pitched in a
falsetto key. The guide said that this old Chinaman was sixty-eight
years of age, and that he had had a life of varied experience. He was
a miner by profession, but had spent all his earnings long ago, and
was now an object of charity as well as of pity. Indeed he was the
very embodiment of misery, a wretched, woebegone, human being! He had
lost one arm in an accident during his mining days. Chinamen in the
thirst for gold had mining claims as well as Anglo-Saxons. This desire
for the precious metal seems to be universal. All men more or less
love gold; and for its acquisition they will undergo great hardship,
face peril, risk their lives. This aged Chinaman for whom there was no
future except to join his ancestors in another life, was now a pauper
notwithstanding all his quest for the treasures of the mines; and his
chief solace, if it be comfort indeed to have the senses benumbed
periodically, or daily, and then wake up to the consciousness of loss
and with a feeling of despair betimes, was in his opium pipe, which he
smoked fifty times a day at the cost of half a dollar, the offering
of charity, the dole received from his pitying countrymen or the
interested traveller who might come to his forlorn abode. But what
a fascination the opium drug has for the Chinaman, and not for him
alone, but for children of other races--for men and women who, when
under its spell, will sell honour and sacrifice all that is dear in
life, and even forego the prospect and the blessed hope of entering at
last into the bliss of the heavenly world! But what is opium, what its
parentage and history? The Greeks will tell you it is their opion or
opos, the juice of the poppy, and the botanist will point out the
magic flower for you as the Papaver Somniferum, whose home was
originally in the north of Europe and in Western Asia; but now, just
as the tribes of the earth have spread out into many lands, so has the
poppy which has brought much misery as well as blessing to men,
found its way into various quarters of the globe, particularly those
countries which are favoured with sunny skies. It is cultivated in
Turkey, India, Persia, Egypt, Algeria and Australia, as well as in
China. I now recall vividly the beautiful poppy fields at Assiut,
Esneh and Kenneh, by the banks of the Nile, in which such subtle
powers were sleeping potent for ill or good as employed by man for
deadening his faculties or soothing pain in reasonable measure. These
flowers were of the reddish kind. In China they have the white, red
and purple varieties, which, as you gaze on them, seem to set the
fields aglow with fire and attract your gaze as if you were enchained
to the spot by an unseen power. The seeds are sown in November and
December, in rows which are eighteen inches apart, and four-fifths
of the opium used in China is the home-product, though it was not
so formerly. In March or April the poppy flowers according to the
climate, the soil, and the location. The opium is garnered in April or
May, and prepared for the market. The Chinese merchant values most of
all the Shense drug, while the Ynnan and the Szechuen drugs take next
rank. The opium is generally made into flat cakes and wrapped up in
folds of white paper. It is said that it was introduced into China in
the reign of Taitsu, between the years A.D. 1280 and 1295; but it is
worthy of note that up to the year 1736 it was imported only in small
quantities and employed simply for its medicinal properties, as a cure
for diarrhoea, dysentery, and fevers, hemorrhage and other ills. It
was in the year 1757 that the monopoly of the cultivation of the poppy
in India passed into the hands of the East India Company through the
victory of Lord Clive over the Great Mogul of Bengal at Plassey; and
from this time the importation of the drug into China became a matter
of great profit financially. In 1773 the whole quantity imported was
only two hundred chests. In 1776 it had increased to one thousand
chests, while in 1790 it leaped up to four thousand and fifty-four
chests. The Chinese Emperor, Keaking, becoming alarmed at its growing
use and its pernicious effect when eaten or smoked, forbade its
importation, and passed laws punishing persons who made use of it
otherwise than medicinally, and the extreme penalty was sometimes
transportation, and sometimes death. Yet the trade increased, and
in the decade between 1820 and 1830 the importation was as high as
sixteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven chests. The evil
became so great that in 1839 a royal proclamation was put forth
threatening English opium ships with confiscation if they did not keep
out of Chinese waters. This was not heeded, and then Lin, the Chinese
Commissioner, gave orders to destroy twenty thousand, two hundred
and ninety-one chests of opium, each containing 149-1/3 pounds, the
valuation of which was $10,000,000. Still the work of smuggling went
on and the result was what is known as the Opium War, which was ended
in 1842 by the treaty of Nanking. China was forced by Great Britain to
pay $21,000,000 indemnity, to cede in perpetuity to England the city
of Hong Kong, and to give free access to British ships entering
the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochoofoo, Ningpo and Shanghai. The
importation of opium from India is still carried on--but the quantity
is not so great as formerly, owing to the cultivation of the plant in
China. The Hong Kong government has an opium farm, for which to-day it
receives a rental of $15,500 per month. The farmer sells on an average
from eight to ten _tins_ of opium daily, the tins being worth about
$150 each. His entire receipts from his sales of the drug are about
$45,000 per month. This opium farmer is well known to be the largest
smuggler of opium into China; and not without reason does Lord Charles
Beresford, in his book "The Break-up of China," say: "Thus,
indirectly the Hong Kong government derives a revenue by fostering
an illegitimate trade with a neighbouring and friendly Power, which
cannot be said to redound to the credit of the British Government. It
is in direct opposition to the sentiments and tradition of the laws of
the British Empire." It was here in Chinatown, in San Francisco, that
I was brought face to face with the havoc that is made through the
opium trade and the use of the pernicious drug in eating and smoking.
I was told that Europeans and Americans sometimes sought the
opium-joints for the purpose of indulgence in the vice of smoking.
Even women were known to make use of it in this way. The old man whom
I visited was lying on his left side, with his head slightly raised
on a hard pillow covered with faded leather. He took the pipe in his
right hand, the other, as I have already said, having been cut off in
the mines. Then he laid down the pipe by his side with the stem near
his mouth. The next movement was to take a kind of long rod, called a
dipper, with a sharp end and a little flattened. This he dipped in
the opium which had the consistency of thick molasses. He twisted the
dipper round and then held the drop which adhered to it over the lamp,
which was near him. He wound the dipper round and round until the
opium was roasted and had a brown colour. He then thrust the end of
the dipper with the prepared drug into the opening of the pipe, which
was somewhat after the Turkish style with its long stem. He next held
the bowl of the pipe over the lamp until the opium frizzled. Then
putting the stem of the pipe in his mouth he inhaled the smoke, and
almost immediately exhaled it through the mouth and nostrils. While
smoking he removed the opium, going through the same process as
before, and it all took about fifteen minutes. What the old man's
feelings were he did not tell us, but he seemed very contented, as if
then he cared for nothing, as if he had no concern for the world and
its trials. But one must read the graphic pages of Thomas De Quincey
in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," in order to know what
are the joys and what the torments of him who is addicted to the use
of the pernicious drug. It was while De Quincey was in Oxford that he
came under its tyranny. At first taken to allay neuralgic pain, and
then resorted to as a remedy on all occasions of even the slightest
suffering, it wove its chain around him like a merciless master who
puts his servant in bonds. But though given to its use all his life
afterwards, in later years he took it moderately. Still he was its
slave. A man of marvellous genius, a master of the English tongue,
he had not full mastery of his own appetite; and one of such talent,
bound Andromeda-like to the rock of his vice, ready to be devoured
in the sea of his perplexity by what is worse than the dragon of the
story, he deserves our pity, nay, even our tears. He tells us how
he was troubled with tumultuous dreams and visions, how he was a
participant in battles, strifes; and how agonies seized his soul, and
sudden alarms came upon him, and tempests, and light and darkness;
how he saw forms of loved ones who vanished in a moment; how he heard
"everlasting farewells;" and sighs as if wrung from the caves of hell
reverberated again and again with "everlasting farewells." "And I
awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will sleep no more!'"